Description

In all opera literature, few works have been subjected to such extreme and frequent paradigm shifts as Weber’s Der Freischütz. While some considered him the originator of natural folk style, others regarded him as the “most German” of composers (Wagner); while some considered the uncanny to be a central plot element, others felt that fate or even nature, more specifically the forest, truly played the lead role (Pfitzner). Later people said that Weber was a successor to French Revolution opera, or that with his use of folk song he followed after Haydn and Beethoven. Regardless of all these considerations, Der Freischütz – a “Romanticopera” in the widest sense of the term – is a popular and definitive work of the German-language repertoire.